arghablog

This seems only appropriate. In the old country, Long Island, the bialys were like the sprinkles, or maybe even the cherry, on top of a bag of steaming, varied bagels. In the sweaty bagel shop, when you run out of ideas, turn to the bialy: (e.g. I’ll have 4 poppies, 3 onion, 4 everything, 2 rye, 2 sesame, 2 cinnamon raisin, 3 pumpernickel, 3 egg, and…what, I have 3 more? Okay, just give me 3 bialys.) Yes, they are taken for granted somewhat – they are less chewy, unboiled, less obviously distinguished from your workaday dinner roll. But therein lies the rub. The bialy has a soul. It wears its also-ran hat with dignity, and is a delicate, non-ostentatious emissary from Old Europe. There is absolutely nothing sexy about the bialy, which is why a website like this is absurd. It is almost, almost ordinary – but in that thin hairline of a difference between the bialy and its truly pedestrian kin, the kaiser, the hard, the oval, lies a chasm into which all the universe might fold. The bialy, while almost ordinary, is in fact the most special thing on the earth: it is the Ray Davies of breadstuffs.

My world view allows for at least some variance when it comes to well regarded bagels. I like, for instance, the bagels at Ess-a-Bagel and Absolute Bagels in NYC (the latter joint is better), but will freely acknowledge that they are somewhat bigger and puffier than my platonic bagel ideal (smallish thing, with a sometimes wide hole). Here in Maine there’s a great bakery called 158 Bake Shop. They make much revered local bagels that are in fact, entirely inauthentic – flatter, wider, less chewy – but charming in their boldness nonetheless (who would dare to put fennel on an everything bagel? They do – and it works!) My ethos, my own personal creed, as it were, owns no such tolerance when it comes to the bialy. I think proper, convincing bialys all look exactly the same: 4 inches in diameter, round but misshapen, a careless smattering of dried onions and maybe a grain or two of salt (or some errantly directed grain or seed) concentrated around the center, occasional wisps of flour on the surface, maybe some traces of cornmeal on the bottom – an artifact of the outright practicality that defines these creatures. Of course there is no hole, but there is a serious, uncircular indentation that, at its thinnest point, is nearly paper thin and renders all efforts to cut the thing awkward at best. The perfect bialy appears to have been made with just the right mixture of love and carelessness. It is toothsome, floury, somewhat yeasty, just the slightest touch springy. It has an indefinable oldness to its taste – not staleness – and calls forward imagery of good, authentic people – Poles, perhaps – sharing the local gossip. I like to eat mine late at night – heated (not toasted for goodness sake!) in the oven, shmeared with my beloved and rare chive cream cheese, in bed. Watching television.

Whereas good out-of-NY bagels do exist, all foreign efforts at the bialy that I’ve encountered have been laughable. I have seen a Maine bialy and it’s not a pretty sight. Even in New York, good and true bialys are few and far between (better accuracy and consistency could be had on Long Island, which is also – unbeknownst to most – a bagel mecca). Since the mysterious aura that distinguishes the bialy is so delicate, so wispy and thin and precious, it is – in lesser efforts – all too often absent. Some glop onion mercilessly upon the center, in the American tradition of MORE. In the same tradition, some just get BIG. A big bialy, however pleasingly alliterative, is nothing more, nothing less, than a crime against nature.

Enough preaching from me, I suppose. I’m off to form my Kinks cover band, which, for reasons that may only be clear to readers of this blog, I think I may have to call Big Bialy.